1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to background investigations and, more particularly, to criminal background investigations in which false negatives, false positives, and offense severity are taken into account.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is common practice for employers to conduct background investigations, particularly criminal background investigations, of people that are being considered for an employment position. Unfortunately, prior investigative techniques have suffered from a number of drawbacks.
There are over three thousand counties in the U.S. and each county has an upper level or felony court. Moreover, there are over thirty thousand cities and towns. Each city or town can in turn have a local court which hears lower court cases for misdemeanor offenses.
Criminal databases can be compiled by gathering felony and misdemeanor court information throughout the United States and storing it in a single relational database. For commercial purposes the contents of this database usually are kept secret from the public to prevent competitors from comparing their content. Instead a search company will provide a “percentage of coverage” referring to the populations of counties instead of percentage of counties. The results of this obfuscation of database content create a number of problems such as false negatives, false positives, and other problems.
Desirably, a technique would be available that would enable an employer to conduct criminal background investigations effectively and accurately. Any such technique preferably would provide an “offense score” that would permit the entity conducting the investigation to have an objective measure of the reliability of the information.